Everyone,

This has been a very interesting thread to follow.  I have been struggling
with this question during my entire graduate education.  I have two
thoughts:

My first instinct would be to follow David Babson's challenge to argue that
anthropology is any informed study that examines humans from a biocultural
perspective.  For those outside of anthropological circles, this means that
all human traits and actions must be understood from a perspective of
complex intertwining of biological, environmental, and cultural
potentialities.  Key questions surround how individual, unique actors or
groups of actors engage with these potentialities.  That said, I have no
idea how to translate this to practice.  It would follow, however, that
anthropological archaeology would derive its most significant questions from
this single major question.  A through history of the technology of vinyl
flooring may seem divorced and somehow purely archaeological.  The same
could be said, however, of a through description of the shift from voiced
bilabial stops to unvoiced bilabial stops in the history of Language X.  The
essential problem here is that anthropology has become such a TREMENDOUSLY
large field that it seems to be all consuming, thus loosing (as I think Bob
Schuyler pointed out) all useful clarity or focus.

So I must turn to my second point:
"Sticks and Stones will break my bones, but Names will never hurt me."
Perhaps we have reached a point of academic complexity where the arbitrary
boundaries drawn over 100 years ago around intellectual positions, seemingly
for a purpose of creating independent academic departments that would have
their own budgets and titles, free from other academic power structures in
the academy, are breaking down and dissolving.  I don't think I have seen a
current essay that I could safely place only within anthropology, history,
geography, geology, or medicine.  I think this is a good thing, generally.
The greatest problem, of course, is that I saw a dissertation from American
Studies that called Lewis Binford a sociologist.  The ironic beauty of that
error aside, this kind of error is a major problem for topically centered
interdisciplinary research.  That is, to a certain extent, the entire reason
we can say that we are masters of a DISCIPLINE.

Is all of this well meaning debate just a sign of the changing position of
research?  As academies dissolve academic departments, reduce the numbers of
faculty, abuse part time and adjunct underclassers, and research moves to
the private and government sectors?

Just my dos centavos...
Tim


----------------------------------
Timothy Scarlett
University of Nevada, Reno
Department of Anthropology / 096
Reno, NV 89557-0096
After August 31st, I will be living out of my truck off I-15 in Utah. . .
[log in to unmask]
----------------------------------
"A Man smiles by himself in the dark,
Perhaps it is because he can see in the dark,
Perhaps it is because he can see the dark.
-- Yannis Ritsos, Selected Poems 1938-1988
----------------------------------

----------
>From: David Babson <[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Ok, What is Anthropology?
>Date: Mon, Aug 16, 1999, 10:31 AM
>

>My apologies for kicking over our anthill.  Also for misattributing the
>"Binford" quote.  I guess I'm hardly a historian--Binford quotes this in
>his 1962 article, "Archaeology as Anthropology," from Willey and Phillips,
>1958.  The perils of secondary sources, especially those retrieved from
>memory.
>
>I'm much more in agreement with those on the list, lately (Mike Polk and
>Diane Dismukes) who tend toward defining archaeology as anthropology from
>the questions we ask.  Historically, in the U.S., we have, and do, tend to
>ask questions about people, past lifeways, past technologies.  We also
>agree that past technologies are inseparably connected to the lifeways of
>the people who created and used them, a situation that can be defined as
>the human ecological niche (so would Steward or White say), or, more
>simply, the human condition.  The basic premise of archaeology is that we
>can "get at" past lifeways, as a means toward answering anthropological
>questions, due to this fundamental relationship.  Yet, I would hardly
>contradict Ned Heite--this is a difficult road to travel, and only the most
>thorough understanding of material culture will let us get to this level of
>analysis, and all too many ambitious projects founder upon data that are
>not sufficient to support that level of analysis.
>
>If we're chasing our tails, here, let's approach this from the other side.
>What is anthropology, that archaeology, historically, in the U.S., aspires
>to be?  Any definitions?
>
>
>
>
>At 10:16 AM 8/16/99 -0500, you wrote:
>>Did Scholl dismiss other disciplines as less worthy, or just state that
>they weren't anthropology? You yourself stated in a previous e-mail that
>archeology could benefit from "a stiff dose of interpretation from other
>disciplines (bold mine)". so by making that statement you recognize that
>the pure study of the history of technology for its sake alone is not
>within the discipline of anthropology, a sub field of which is archeology.
>>
>>It doesn't mean these other disciplines are less worthy - just means they
>aren't archeology.
>>
>>I am unable to accept that there is any professional archeology that
>"isn't anthropological at all".Ooxymoronic in my book.
>>
>>Diane Dismukes
>>